


Keep You Close

by sunshineflying



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Canon Universe, Hux-centric, Kid Fic, Single Parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-15 21:52:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14798634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshineflying/pseuds/sunshineflying
Summary: In which Armitage Hux, in an effort to survive the crumbling of the First Order, takes an escape pod to an unknown planet where his life changes forever. In a moment of weakness, he rescues a crying infant and three years later, she is still with him. Apparently, fatherhood suits him more than he expected.A snapshot of a day in the life of accidental single father Armitage Hux.





	Keep You Close

**Author's Note:**

> I'm well aware this fic is incredibly self-indulgent. It's fueled by watching gifs and movies of Domhnall Gleeson with children and my own conversations in a group chat. Thanks to my writing sprinter friends for encouraging me to put this fic into the world!
> 
> PS - Maree is pronounced exactly like Mary.

Settling into a life on Naboo after the fall of the First Order was easier than Hux could have expected. Nobody had asked questions when he’d landed on the planet, tucked away on some stranger’s ship as they escaped a planet Hux didn’t know the name of. That planet had been about to go up in smoke, the First Order - what was left of it, at least - was decimating the planet after its resources had been depleted. 

In the midst of this assault the First Order had been overrun by traitorous Stormtroopers, men and women who had been persuaded to turn at the inspiration of FN-2187. Between that, the defection of Supreme Leader Ren to the scavenger’s Grey Jedi cause, and the infighting amongst generals for a spot at Snoke and Ren’s throne, chaos had broken out. The First Order was crumbling. Every man on that bridge Hux had assumed he could trust had lifted a blaster at him, the group of them deciding that Hux needed to go, too. He was a threat.

So he’d disarmed a few with his blaster, and he’d run. His father would have been so disappointed at the way Hux had fled from conflict. Brendol Hux wouldn’t have tolerated his son the deserter. He would have expected Hux to stay on the bridge and fight for his right at the throne - his right to the title of Supreme Leader. But instead, Hux chose to survive.

But Hux valued his life more than a title, so he’d run. The escape pod soared off into space, sustaining only one blaster hit to the side. Unfortunately, that blaster hit had been enough to send Hux soaring into the unnamed planet - one of the many the First Order had plans to mine and then destroy - that changed his life forever.

He stood in the hallway of his quiet home on Naboo - an apartment above a toy store, of all places - waiting patiently. His daughter Maree, who he’d named after his mother, walked into the room in a white nightgown, her damp hair dripping over her shoulders. She was three, and the most independent he’d ever seen her. Somehow, since finding her in a field full of dead bodies and burning machinery, he’d turned both of their lives around enough to get them to this point.

“I’m ready, daddy,” she said, holding out a hairbrush to him.

“Go get your towel,” he instructed. “Your hair is far too wet.”

Maree pouted, but followed his command. He was stern, but only when it was fully warranted. Armitage Hux had resolved the moment he’d unknowingly stepped into the world of fatherhood that he was not going to be like his father. He was going to be tough, but only when necessary. Affection didn’t come naturally to him, but he would try. He would hearken back to the faint traces of memories he still held of his mother, and he would try to emulate her warm, loving spirit as best he could. So far, this method of parenting hadn’t betrayed him.

Hux stepped into the bedroom - it was a simple space with white walls and a few more frills than he ever would have planned for his home - but Maree was content with it, and that’s what mattered most. Her bed was all in white, with curtains hanging near the headboard and stuffed animals along the footboard. They were various creatures she’d accumulated in their three years of adventures on Naboo, with her little ewok in the middle - the first stuffed creature she’d ever received. Or so her father told her. She’d been too young to remember it, of course.

“Here you go,” Maree said, nearly tripping over the towel as she dragged it into her bedroom. 

Hux took a seat on her bed and waited for her to join him. He took the towel from her, as well as the hairbrush, and they settled in. She held a stuffed porg as Hux tried to absorb a bit more water from the bath in the towel before he worked through the knots with a hairbrush. This was a typical evening routine for them, done in rotation with nights where Maree asked for her fingernails and toenails to be painted with her favorite navy blue nail varnish.

It never bothered Hux; after so many years in the military, routine was in his blood.

“Tell me a story, daddy?” Maree prompted politely.

Hux tossed the towel towards the door, a reminder to take it with him when he left. Then, as his daughter settled in front of him on the bed, he asked, “Which story would you like to hear tonight?”

“The one where you found me,” she answered.

The smallest of smiles played upon Hux’s lips at her request. For as melodramatic as the story may seem to him, Maree loved it. She ate it up. Hux hadn’t kept count, but he was sure he’d told her the story at least once a week.

“Alright,” he agreed, beginning to gently brush out the knots in her hair.

Her blonde hair was thin and fine, a dark dirty shade of blonde that reminded Hux very much of the mining colony from which he’d saved her, long before the hair had ever grown atop her head. She was patient and calm, even when the brush caught on knots. As he brushed his daughter’s hair, Hux began the story.

“It was many years ago, now.”

“Daddy!” Maree protested with a giggle. “I’m only three!”

Amusement on his face again, Hux replied, “Three years is a very long time.” Maree laughed, because it was silly to her that her father would think that. Three years was nothing, compared to how old he was. “There was a war going on, and I was trying very hard not to get killed.” 

The mood in the room grew more somber, but Hux was never afraid to discuss death with his daughter. In a galaxy as fraught as theirs, death was an inevitability. It would not do to be afraid of it. One should know it, understand it as a viable threat, and then live their life grateful for each and every day possible. He wanted his daughter to be smarter than he had been - or any of his family members before him.

“My escape pod crashed on a planet I’d never been to, right in the middle of a battle.”

“Were you scared?” Maree asked. 

She always asked this question, no matter how many times she heard the story and knew what happened. It never ceased to amaze her just how much her father had done for her, what he’d been through to bring them to the life she knew now. 

“I was, yes,” Hux confessed. He always told her the truth at this part. While his father called his fear a weakness, Hux called it strength. Teach a child that their fear made them weak and they would crumble under pressure. Teach them that their fear was a tool - a method used to grow and make yourself stronger when you finally overcame it - that was far more important a lesson. “But I soldiered on,” he said. Hux had nearly memorized this story by now, he’d told it so many times. “And in the middle of that battle, I found you.”

“Was I scared?”

Hux brushed Maree’s hair out of her face, the tangles all sufficiently worked through now. Gently, he slid his finger down the center of her head, parting her hair into two neat bunches. True to routine, Maree took hold of the bunch he’d brushed over her right shoulder, and Hux began to carefully braid the bunch on the left side of her head, beginning up by her forehead.

“Yes, you were very frightened,” Hux told her as his fingers deftly began to form a perfect braid. He’d been taught by his mother, many years ago, and was proud that he’d retained the skill. “You were crying very loudly, but because of you, I got up and out of the field and went to find safety.”

“Would you have done that without me?” she asked.

This was a new question, one she hadn’t come up with already. Hux pondered it for a moment. Truthfully, if she hadn’t been crying, he may have lain in the field full of dead bodies, still passed out after falling and hitting his head on a brutally hard piece of mangled transparisteel. Maree’s wails in the arms of her dead mother had been enough to pull him from what had likely been a concussed sleep; she’d been relentless in her screaming and crying - an infant merely weeks old, and already her whole world had been taken from her.

“I’d fallen and hurt my head,” Hux explained to her. “If you hadn’t cried and been loud enough to wake me up, I might have still been asleep in the field when the second raid happened.”

He twists a hair tie at the end of one finished braid and sets to work braiding the hair on the other side of her head. Maree sits very still and calm in front of him, still clutching her stuffed porg toy. “Is the second raid when we escaped the planet?” she asks.

Maree is beginning to memorize the story - one day Hux is confident she’ll be able to recite it back to him or anyone else who asks. “Yes,” he replied. “That’s the one. We’d just barely escaped the field. You were crying so much.”

“Why? You always make my crying stop.”

Hux was constantly surprised by her curiosity and naivete. “I always try, yes,” he agreed. “You’re very right about that.” Hux finished the braid on the other side of her head and wrapped the end of it with a hair tie. “But you were very scared, and so was I. You were hungry, and I imagine very tired, too. It was a bad, bad day.”

“Oh,” Maree said as she patted the braids on her head. 

She turned around in her bed and started to pull at the blankets. Hux reached out, assisting her gently as he did each and every night, to pull back the sheets and help her nestle beneath them. He handed her the porg and sat down at her side. He sat up against her headboard, a ridiculous sight against the curtains he’d hung for decoration at her headboard. He still wore dark colors - usually greens now, rather than blacks - whereas his daughter preferred light colors of any kind.

She snuggled the porg to her chest and laid her head on the pillows. Her large, green eyes gazed up at him. “What happened next?” she asked.

Hux patted her head gently and said, “After that, we ran through the city to get to safety. I shouted for help until someone who was about to fly away in their ship let us climb aboard. That’s the ship that brought us here, to Naboo.”

“I like Naboo,” Maree intoned with a smile on her face.

“Yes,” Hux nodded. “I do, too.”

“Did you live on Naboo before?” she pressed.

Hux shook his head. “No,” he replied. “I grew up on a different planet. One called Arkanis. It’s where my mother lived.”

Maree sat up in bed, eyes full of spark and curiosity. “Do I get to see her?” she asked eagerly.

She made an attempt to climb onto his lap, and he held her with a touch far gentler than anyone who knew him in the First Order might have thought him capable of. “No,” he told her, cradling her as she settled onto his legs. “She died when I was young. Just like your mother, on the planet during the raids.”

“Did you know her?” Maree wondered.

Hux nodded. “I did. She was a beautiful woman. She loved to cook and be in the kitchen. It was her job, and she was very good at it.”

“What was her name?”

Hux smiled as his daughter looked up at him. Genuinely smile. He didn’t often do that, but he found it becoming more of a habit as his years as a father wore on. Maree softened him, brought out the seeds of tenderness within him that his mother planted when he was a young child. “Maree.”

Her whole face lit up. “ _ My _ name?”

“Yes, your name. I chose your name because I knew you’d be wonderful, like her.”

Maree looked happier than he’d ever seen her, and she nestled closer to his chest in a massive embrace. “Can we go to Arkanis one day?” she asked hopefully against his sweater.

“Would you like that?” he wondered. Maree nodded her head eagerly. Hux leaned down to place a soft kiss against the top of her head. A moment of tenderness he saved only for Maree. “Yes, we can visit one day. I can show you where she was buried.”

“And where you grew up?” 

“Yes, Maree. That, too.”

Content with the course of their conversation, Maree curled up on her father’s lap and closed her eyes. Hux had learned very early on that it took her awhile to fall asleep. Her mind was always going, full of curiosity and questions about the galaxy around her.

Most nights, he could read her to sleep or put on a holovid, but sometimes she needed something more, like a cuddle or the occasional lullaby. It was getting better as she grew up, but it was still a struggle sometimes. At least she didn’t have nightmares - those seemed to only plague Hux. 

When he heard the familiar sound of Maree’s breath evening out and sleep finally coming to her, he gently laid her down on her bed. He spent a few moments just looking at her, taking care to adjust the blankets so they covered her completely, and to be sure her stuffed porg toy was never too far away from her hands. 

Three years ago, he’d expected this all to be temporary, but now three years later he’d found it shockingly fulfilling. By rising through the ranks in the First Order, he’d proven that he could be a stronger militant than his father. But he also found that, in raising a child so calm and content and  _ happy _ , that he’d also surpassed his father on that front. Now he was a better survivor, military leader,  _ and _ father. And nothing made him feel prouder or more successful.

Now he just had to fight the  _ insane urge _ he had to visit the local orphange just in case he found another child like Maree.

Just in case.


End file.
